Shocks to monetary and fiscal policy have played a major role in public debt developments in the OECD countries since the mid-1970s. According to the applied VAR approach, these shocks, taken together, explained, on average, about half of the forecast error variation in the debt to GDP ratio,...

This paper deals with the fiscal behaviour of governments in the 1920s and 1930s. The intention is to see whether there were the same features in government behaviour as in the post-World War II era. In par-ticular, attention is paid to asymmetric fiscal policies, ie the question of whether...

In this paper we analyse the monetary impact of alternative fiscal policy rules using the debt and deficit, both mentioned as measures of fiscal policy performance in the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). We use a New Keynesian model, with endogenous labour supply, distortionary taxation and no...

This paper deals with the problems of assessing the effects of fiscal policy in the European Monetary Union. Here, we face wide cross-country differences in key fiscal parameters, some of which may also be vary over time (business cycle). Moreover, these effects may also depend on trade...

It is widely recognised that fiscal policy will have greater responsibilities for cyclical stabilisation in the EMU, given the loss of the monetary instrument at national level. At the same time, the EMU’s budgetary framework emphasises the need to rely on automatic fiscal stabilisers, rather...

Keeping public finances on a sustainable foundation while the population ages is clearly a problem in Finland, as in many other western countries. The shrinking of the working-age population, ageing of the labour force, and growth in the number of very old persons form a difficult combination...

This study analyses the fiscal sustainability of the Finnish public sector using stochastic projections to describe uncertain future demographic trends and asset yields. While current tax rates are unlikely to yield sufficient tax revenue to finance public expenditure with an ageing population,...

The framework for fiscal policy coordination in EMU has been in effect for three years. The experience gained shows that the rule-based approach provides in principle a feasible solution for policy coordination among a large number of heterogeneous countries whose joint interest is to safeguard...

This paper provides some further tests for the proposition that a larger public sector leads to smaller out-put volatility. Both Gali and Fatas & Mihov have provided some evidence which appears to support this proposition. Their evidence is, however, based on a relatively small sample of...

This paper deals with the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy when the central bank is pursuing a price stability-oriented monetary policy. In particular, we study the durability of the price stability regime when public debt accumulates as a result of ultimately unsustainable deficits....